The Attivo Blog

Stop with the buzzwords and jargon already! We've done enough Business Process Assessments and Value Stream Mapping using Lean techniques with Kaizen Events and Kanban methods to optimize and re-engineer business processes and Throughput Time Efficiency (TTE) to know that NO ONE KNOWS WHAT THE HECK I'M TALKING ABOUT!  I get a better response to all of that when I sing to my dog...at least he tilts his head and looks at me. Think about the things that people do in your company day in and day out.  Those are called business processes.  Some people make a product, or perhaps provide a service to customers.  Other support the main activity of the business with necessary back room things like sending out invoices, receiving cash, paying bills, etc.  All of these activities incur costs for the business, which in turn is passed on to the customer in the price that they pay for the goods or services that you sell. Let's pretend that you invite your biggest customer to spend two weeks at your company to really get to know how you do things.  At the end of the two weeks, you give him the opportunity to assess your operation, and tell you what he thinks of the value that you really deliver.  He might say "Your engineers are outstanding, and your quality people really have it dialed in.  But your customer service department...they're doing everything manually, can't find anything, redo things multiple times...take them off my bill, please!" Think your operation could stand that kind of scrutiny?  No?  Then why are YOU putting up with it?  After all, your customer writes small checks compared to the big ones that you stroke every day to fund all that waste. Like a leaky faucet, there are inefficiencies throughout your operation that are being ignored, and are costing you thousands of dollars that you could otherwise keep.  Some leaks are bigger than others, but together, it adds up in a hurry.  That's what a Business Process Assessment uncovers - where the waste is, and where the opportunity for gains in efficiency exist.  It's about doing more with less.  Like getting the job done with one person instead of two.  Welcome to the new economy.  You don't need to use all of the big words that I was throwing around at the beginning to get this right.  It's a lot more common sense than you think, and a lot less painful than an annual physical exam.  Contact us to find out how we lead you through a process assessment...there's a huge benefit waiting for you.  It takes outside leadership to pull this off...or you would have already done it.

The Fed told us that the recession is over – What do you do to prepare for the recovery? Chances are you’ll need to create a “new normal” for your business.  If you don’t make adjustments on the way up, the risk is that during the next downturn (there will most likely be one; after all), things will be as painful as they were this time.  Here's my top 5 recommendations: 1)  Assess and improve your processes Look around.  See that crack in the ceiling?  Of course you don’t – you’ve ignored it for the last 6 years, why would you see it now?   A good business process review is in order – a “full 360” examination of how well each process is working will reveal lots of opportunities to streamline your business and cut costs – while positioning for growth.  You want to be able to handle a lot more business without a significant increase in personnel.  Contact me for a free worksheet tool to help you get this done. 2 )  Improve your customer service! Price is interesting, but today customer service is king.  If you can’t deliver on time with high quality products and services, somebody else will.  Invest in customer service improvements.  Delight your customers, not just satisfy them.  Survey them (with tools like Survey Monkey) to make sure they’re delighted. 3)  Shorten your lead times Like customer service, someone else will deliver sooner if you can’t.  Look at all elements of lead times – they’re not all on the shop floor, by the way.  A tremendous amount of lead time improvement can be achieve in the front office, in areas such as quoting, planning, etc.  Lead time reduction is a critical part of becoming a lean organization…so get lean already! 4)  Tighten your controls.  If you have inventory, what is your inventory accuracy level?  No, really, what is it? If you’re going to rely on systems (as you should), one of the key metrics in your operations is inventory accuracy.  It’s at the core of all the assumptions that systems use in their logic.  I’ve heard many a business owner tell me that “we have an inventory problem”, to which I always answer “your inventory system is probably just fine, it’s you’re everything else’ that isn’t working”.  Inventory accuracy is very telling about how well your processes are defined and controlled within the system, and is the best report card for operations to measure their controls.  So, how are you measuring inventory accuracy?  Gut feel?  I wouldn’t buy your company. 5)  Invest in Ecommerce  Still depending on that tired looking electronic brochure of a website that your nephew did for you back in ’99?  Well, welcome to the 21^stcentury.  Your customers and suppliers expect more (see #2 above).  Figure out how to collaborate via the web with your customers and suppliers – it will keep your costs low and your customer service high.  Don’t underestimate the importance of ecommerce, regardless of whether you pride yourself on the “personal touch”.  Consider that generation Y or Z customers communicate differently, and perhaps don’t think they need to speak with you.  What about your South Korean manufacturer?  Staying up until 2:00 AM is not exactly what anyone would call a productive way to spend your time.